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Buyers guide GTE /GTC (in English)


Laatst bijgewerkt: 20 maart 2012 door Erik Hofman

What will fail without maintenance

A Scimitar GTE is a fantastic car. Great fun to drive.

Too bad some people think that a Scimitar does not need maintenance. They really do need it! This will not be a page with all the weaknesses of Scimitars, just a page where you can see what happens if you don't take care of your car. Some guys/girls have badluck and have all the trouble created by lack of maintenance because they bought a car from someone who didn't care.
At this moment I only have a few pics, and I am not likely to get more myself, because my cars seem to be in good shape (yes, it took some time and money...).

Front Suspension

These are the bushes from the lower part of the front suspension. The upper one is new, the lower one has been used for too many miles (> 15,000 mls) The material is rubber. These are from my car.
I noticed that the rubber bushes are worse than they used to be. Something confirmed by Geert van Hout. Now for the first time I decided to use poly-urethane bushes. Wait and see which are better.
A hint fitting PU bushes: Use a lot of grease. Grease as much as you can, both the bushes as the wishbone arms. It makes the fitting a lot easier and protects the bushes when fitted.

Bushes FS
On this example, the trunnion and the vertical link have been seperated the wrong way. The thread on both objects has dissappeared. The materials ground themselves. The trunnion (lower) is bronze-like, the verticallink (upper) iron. Not visible in this picture, but there is a grease nipple on the verticallink. If you don't feed it with grease (plain high melting point grease, nothing special) this is what might happen. On this car it collapsed when it was doing 80 km/h | 50 mph. A loud CLONCK and burning rubber stopped the car, impossible to move. The weight of the car was resting on the wheelarch and destroyed it just enough to keep the owner from the pub for a few days. In this case the owner (Chris Pallasch) was lucky (and so was I because I was a passenger when it happened). Just the damage to the front suspension, tyre and body. If this had happened on a busy road, or with 150 km/h | 94 mph..... Advise: grease your front suspension regularly, top-balljoint, vertical link and don't forget the trunnion bolt!
Broken trunnion assembly

Fuel line etc.

When you don't use your Scimitar so often, or for other reasons the fuel line can become spongy. When petrol starts leaking over a hot engine or manifold you'll get a fire! And it can destroy your car for good. The car on the picture used LPG as main fuel. When the owner ran out of LPG, he switched to petrol. Unfortunately rubber fuel lines tend to get spongy when they aren't used. Or another possible reason, the float was stuck and flooded the carburator. In this case fuel started leaking immediatelly over the hot engine and it caught fire. The car was so damaged that it was beyond repairing. Don't be fooled, even the alloy wheels and tyres burnt! The steel ones are for transport.   Burned love...
Wanted: more " what went wrong pictures" preferably with story. Please send it to me